


help my lifeless frame to breathe

by inkin_brushes



Series: Immortals (Vamp AU) [53]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:52:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkin_brushes/pseuds/inkin_brushes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sunburst on his back was fire on his skin, and when the hand fell on his right forearm, fingers digging in painfully, his wards went off, shimmering out of him in a wave of energy he felt down to his toes.</p><p>The hand didn’t let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
Sanghyuk stepped out of the bathroom, steam wafting out behind him in thick plumes. He looked to the bed where Jaehwan was still sleeping like— well, like the dead.  
  
Goosebumps broke out over Sanghyuk’s damp skin, the air in the bedroom significantly colder than the humid space of the bathroom. It had been nice in there, a steamy cocoon, the vestiges of sleep and ghosts of Jaehwan’s touch keeping the darker thoughts at bay. But it had to come to an end.   
  
He dressed quickly, in clothing set out well before he’d gone to sleep. He hadn’t really had anything funeral appropriate, so he was wearing a mix of his friends’ clothes. Black trousers, black button up, black blazer. There was no tie— he knew Sungjae wouldn’t have minded.  
  
Once dressed, his damp hair slicked away from his forehead, he knelt beside the bed. Jaehwan did not stir, his face freshly clean. Sanghyuk had wiped away the dried blood of his tears before he’d gone into the shower.   
  
“Jaehwan,” Sanghyuk murmured, reaching out to take Jaehwan’s icy hand. Jaehwan’s fingers twitched in his, and with effort, his eyes opened a little. “I need to go. It’s time.”  
  
Jaehwan held his hand, fingers circling loosely. “I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered, voice husky from sleep.  
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk said, surprised by the tenderness in his own voice. He rubbed his thumb over Jaehwan’s knuckles. “But I have to.”  
  
“Promise me you’ll stay with Ilhoon, that you’ll stay safe,” Jaehwan murmured, the words melting together.  
  
“I’ll stay with Ilhoon,” Sanghyuk said softly, because he could promise that, if not safety. “And I’ll text you, through the day, to let you know where we are. Once it’s night and I’m ready to separate from Ilhoon, you can come get me. Alright?”  
  
Jaehwan seemed to be searching for something in Sanghyuk’s eyes. “Promise to come back.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s hand on Jaehwan’s tightened, for a moment. “I promise to try,” Sanghyuk said, and Jaehwan’s eyes shut as he turned his face into the pillow, hiding his expression.   
  
Sanghyuk stood, paused, and then leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the hardness of Jaehwan’s bare shoulder. Jaehwan turned his face again, and he wasn’t crying, but he looked wretched. He lifted himself up to press a kiss to Sanghyuk’s mouth. The motion seemed to take great effort.   
  
“I love you,” Jaehwan murmured, and Sanghyuk wished he had the courage to say it back.   
  
——  
  
When Sanghyuk pulled up outside Ilhoon’s apartment, he and Hyunsik were already standing out on the street. Ilhoon looked paler than normal, lips pressed together to the point of whiteness. He was dressed in a slim cut black suit which highlighted the narrowness of his shoulders; if it weren’t for the dark circles under his eyes, he would have looked like he belonged on the cover of a magazine. Hyunsik was dressed more like Sanghyuk, in a pair of black pants and a suit jacket that didn’t quite match. He had his hands stuffed in his pockets and was shuffling his feet when Sanghyuk stopped.   
  
Ilhoon climbed into the passenger seat, leaving Hyunsik to slide into the back. They both fastened their belts without looking at Sanghyuk, murmuring their hellos. Sanghyuk didn’t say anything in return and just pulled away from the sidewalk.   
  
There atmosphere between them was heavy. The empty seat by Hyunsik’s side was a constant reminder of their destination, the loss that they had all suffered. Every time Sanghyuk glanced in the rearview mirror, he thought he should be catching Sungjae’s eye, seeing him grin. The empty space pulled their words away, left them with a crushing silence.   
  
Sungjae’s hometown was just less than two hours away. About half an hour in, Sanghyuk switched on the radio to cover up the uncomfortable silence. Hyunsik was watching the scenery go by, his head resting back on his seat. Ilhoon seemed lost in thought, staring blankly ahead. It was almost a relief to pull into the parking lot of the church and climb out of the car into the fresh air.   
  
The church was small, and probably picturesque, but the sky was full of ominous grey clouds, casting a dim light on the old stone building. The grass around it smelled like it had recently been cut, and the burial ground seemed to be a short walk away, at the top of a small hill behind the church. Sanghyuk could just see the tops of headstones, and he had to swallow thickly at the sight.   
  
There was a soft touch at his elbow; Hyunsik, his eyes already rimmed red, looked like he wanted to give Sanghyuk a smile but couldn’t remember how to do it. “We should go in,” he said. “We’re cutting it close.”   
  
The parking lot did seem to be pretty full, and the only other people around were trailing up to the church doorway. Ilhoon started off first, with a determined stride. Hyunsik caught up with him and murmured something too quiet for Sanghyuk to hear. Sanghyuk followed behind, breathing in the smell of the cut grass, trying to find comfort in it.   
  
There was an older couple standing at the door of the church greeting the last few people coming in. The woman looked a lot like Sungjae, but even shorter, her eyes swollen and red with tears. The man with his arm around her wasn’t much taller than Sungjae had been, and his face was stern with grief. He nodded silently at them as they approached.   
  
At the sight of Ilhoon, the woman’s face crumpled. “Oh, Ilhoon,” she said, stepping forward to embrace him, sobbing afresh. Ilhoon put his arms around her shoulders and held her, but didn’t bother trying to comfort her. There was an uncomfortable tightness to his jaw that Sanghyuk understood well.   
  
They’d been told the official story on Sungjae’s death — officially it was a vampire attack, but everything had been forged so that it looked like he had died in the line of duty with the VCF. It was the same story told at multiple hunter funerals, the few who had families to mourn them. It was the right story, true in the larger parts, but it still felt like they were lying to grieving parents, and for Ilhoon, who had grown up knowing Sungjae and his family, it felt like an additional cruelty. Besides which, even though he had swapped his lips rings out for small, subdued black studs, the jewelry and the bleached hair meant that Ilhoon didn’t look much like any VCF officer Sanghyuk had ever seen.   
  
“I’m so glad you could make it,” Sungjae’s mother said eventually, pulling back and dabbing at her eyes. “It’s been so long, and it’s— it’s good to see you. Sungjae would have wanted—” Her face crumpled again but she seemed to draw herself together. Then her eyes fell on Hyunsik and Sanghyuk. Ilhoon caught the direction of her gaze and motioned to them.   
  
“This is Hyunsik,” Ilhoon said softly, “and Sanghyuk. They worked with Sungjae too.”  
  
“Sungjae was my partner,” Sanghyuk said, hearing his voice come out thick, not sure he could really explain everything that word encompassed, “for a while.”   
  
Even grief-stricken, the look she gave them made Sanghyuk felt like he was being dressed down. “Sungjae told us about you,” she said, and Sanghyuk had to work to keep his face from spasming, wondering what, exactly, Sungjae had told her.   
  
“He didn’t tell you too much, I hope,” Sanghyuk said, and smiled, a fragile little thing. Sungjae’s mother smiled back, watery and endlessly sad. She patted him on the arm as they walked past her into the church, and Hyunsik too. It made Sanghyuk think of his own mother, of how long it had been since he’d seen her.  
  
Inside the church, almost every pew was filled. There were people up near the front who must have been members of Sungjae’s family: aunts, uncles, cousins, a few of them young enough that it seemed likely they’d never even met Sungjae before he went into training. Behind were a few people of their age, school friends, perhaps, people that Sungjae had grown up with.   
  
The three of them sat near the back. When the heavy church doors shut, the space turned a bit claustrophobic, sealing them all in under the weight of their grief. There was a coffin near the altar, a dark wooden box, closed, that drew Sanghyuk’s eyes to it no matter how often he tried to resist. Judging by the tense way Ilhoon was sitting next to him, the way his eyes were fixed forward, he was having the same issue.   
  
The only other funeral Sanghyuk had attended was when he was young, and he remembered very little of it. This one seemed to be long, and he sat through it with a numbness filling him, feeling out of space, out of time. As a hunter, he had grown used to moving past things, to recovering from pain and loss. He thought that was why he had been able to accept Wonshik’s betrayal, and then Hakyeon’s turning, so quickly. It was like a forgetting, in a way; forgetting that things had ever been different before, forgetting that these friends had existed.   
  
This numbness was something else. He couldn’t forget this, couldn’t move past it. It was something that he knew he would carry around for the rest of his days, however numbered those days may be.   
  
Beside him, Ilhoon began to cry quietly. Hyunsik took his hand.   
  
A young man got up, looking enough like Sungjae to be his brother, or perhaps a cousin. He looked a little older. He read a eulogy, his hands shaking almost as much as his voice. The paper fluttered. He talked about how proud Sungjae’s family had been when he joined the VCF. How glad they had been that he had chosen to do something so special with his life. How he had died doing what he had always wanted to spend his life doing.   
  
Sungjae’s parents were crying too, loudly, and all Sanghyuk could think was, _Sungjae was too young for this_.   
  
Fuck, _he_ was too young for this.   
  
Afterwards, when it was all over and Sanghyuk’s head ached from the tension in his shoulders and neck, four men carried the coffin out of the church, the box perched on their shoulders, their faces set in solemn strain. Everyone trailed out of the church and up the hill to where Sungjae’s body would be laid to rest. Sanghyuk was so fixated on not watching their progress that he almost missed Ilhoon trying to get his attention.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, resting a hand on his lower arm. “Can I talk to you?”   
  
Sanghyuk nodded, glancing at Hyunsik, who gave them a wavery smile and then continued walking towards the parking lot. Ilhoon waited until he was out of hearing, until everyone else had trailed out of the church, leaving them alone on the stone steps, before he spoke again.   
  
“I didn’t know who else I could talk to about this,” he said. “I could talk to Hyunsik but he doesn’t— he doesn’t get it, like I think you do.”   
  
His face was so pale, and his voice so uncertain, that Sanghyuk felt a sharp surge of worry. “What is it?”   
  
“I— I think that I want to quit hunting.”   
  
It shamed Sanghyuk, but his first reaction was relief. It wasn’t like being a normal civilian was exactly safe, but it was a damn sight safer than being a hunter. Having both of his closest remaining friends out of it all would go a long way to making sure he didn’t have to be the one saying goodbye in the future. It was selfish, when he knew they would be saying goodbye to him soon, but he couldn’t help how he felt.   
  
“I’d be lying, if I told you I didn’t think that was a good idea, after everything,” Sanghyuk murmured, and Ilhoon’s face twisted, looking conflicted. “Sungjae’s gone, Ilhoon, and I will be soon as well— and Hyunsik’s quit. Why should you stay?”  
  
“I saw that I did.” Ilhoon’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper; he still had his hand on Sanghyuk’s arm but now his fingers were hooked into his sleeve. “I— I saw that I don’t quit hunting. I know what it feels like, when I’m certain of something in the future, and I knew that it wasn’t going to change. But now, with everything that has happened— I’m really fucking scared, Sanghyuk.”   
  
Sanghyuk bit his lip hard to stop himself from blurting out the first thing that came into his mind, which was _me too_. It wasn’t helpful, and besides, Ilhoon probably already knew it.   
  
“If I talked to Hyunsik about it, he’d just be relieved that I was getting out, he doesn’t know what this means. I foresaw something and now that’s just falling apart around my ears. And I don’t know what to do with that.”   
  
“Circumstances can change,” Sanghyuk said quietly. “It’s possible what you saw was your own resolution, your own firmness in this course, rather than the actual future itself.”   
  
“Maybe,” Ilhoon said, and Sanghyuk could tell he was nibbling on the internal part of his piercing, the metal clinking against his teeth. “What would I even do, if I quit? I dropped out of high school to become a hunter, I don’t have any other skills. I’m not like Hyunsik, with a back-up plan here.”   
  
Sanghyuk plucked Ilhoon’s hand from his sleeve and gave his wrist a comforting squeeze. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit here,” he said. “You’re far more magical that you seem to realize. That’s not nothing, Ilhoon.”   
  
Ilhoon scoffed. His face was still white, his eyes swollen and puffy. “I’m too old to go to a magical academy,” he said. “And I don’t have the money even if they would accept me.”   
  
“Kyungsoo would probably take you on as an apprentice,” Sanghyuk said. It wasn’t until he’d finished saying it that he realised how true that probably was. The thought of them in cahoots was almost terrifying, but they would get along well. Sanghyuk knew little about magic, but he thought that their styles would be compatible. Ilhoon looked unconvinced. “It’s worth looking into, isn’t it? But even if he won’t— quit, Ilhoon. Just quit, if that’s what you want. There’s no point in continuing like this just because you don’t have any other plan in place. Don’t die for this, not when it’s not something you want to do anymore.”   
  
Ilhoon looked at him closely, in that way only he could. It felt like being scoured. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Yeah. I think— I think I will.”   
  
Sanghyuk’s relief meant that he was actually able to smile.   
  
Ilhoon put his arm into the crook of Sanghyuk’s elbow and began leading him up to the hill. “Come on,” he said softly. “This isn’t over yet.”   
  
It wasn’t, Sanghyuk knew, as he turned his face towards the top of the hill, the green slope and grey sky. But maybe, maybe it was beginning to be.  
  
——  
  
The drive home felt shorter. They were heading east most of the way, the setting sun glinting bright in Sanghyuk’s rearview mirror, turning the interior of the car warm hues of pink.  
  
Hyunsik curled into the corner of the backseat, grief leaving him exhausted. Ilhoon seemed— changed. Sanghyuk did not know how else to describe it. He sat in the passenger seat, spine straight, face set.   
  
By the time Sanghyuk was pulling off the interstate, the sky was dark, Hyunsik properly asleep. Sanghyuk had opted to leave the radio off, finding this silence less oppressive, more peaceful. Hyunsik’s breathing was soft and even, barely audible over the hum of the car.  
  
“I want to go now,” Ilhoon said suddenly. Sanghyuk glanced at him, watched as Ilhoon swallowed thickly. “I want— I want it to be over.”  
  
“You want to go to HQ now, you mean?” Sanghyuk asked, slowing down a little. He stopped the car in front of Ilhoon and Hyunsik’s building, pulling up beside the curb.  
  
“Not necessarily now, but— tonight. I’ll go tonight,” Ilhoon said. He ran his hand through his hair shakily. “It makes more sense, than waiting.”  
  
“I’ll take you, it’ll be safer than walking,” Sanghyuk said, and Ilhoon threw him a look heavy with gratitude.   
  
Sanghyuk was about to pull away from the curb, but Ilhoon murmured for him to wait. He turned in his seat, reaching back to put his hand on Hyunsik’s thigh and shake lightly. “Hyunsik,” he murmured, and Hyunsik’s eyes opened, and he gave an incoherent mumble. “We’re home. Sanghyuk and I need to run to HQ. Do you want to come or stay here?”  
  
Hyunsik took a moment to think, clearly out of it. “I think I— I need to rest. I don’t want to go back there.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s heart ached, and Ilhoon’s face softened. “Okay,” Ilhoon said, and he got out of the car so he could open Hyunsik’s door, help his sleepy frame out. “I’ll be right back,” Ilhoon said to Sanghyuk, before he closed their doors.  
  
Sanghyuk watched them walk, hand in hand, into the building. A frisson of unease went through him, and he hit the button to lock the doors, as if that would actually make a difference.  
  
“Stupid,” he mumbled, and pulled his phone out to text Jaehwan, as promised. _Still with Ilhoon_ , he sent. _Something’s come up, so I’ll be with him a few more hours. I’ll text you when we’re done_.  
  
He got no reply, but he hadn’t exactly been expecting one. It was still relatively early, for Jaehwan, who was prone to sleeping in late.   
  
Sanghyuk tapped his fingers over the steering wheel, to no particular rhythm, as he waited, and then finally Ilhoon came back out, having changed into normal clothes. He slid gracefully into the passenger seat, and Sanghyuk pulled wordlessly away from the curb.  
  
“He went right back to sleep,” Ilhoon murmured, his face still soft. Sanghyuk was glad that after everything, Ilhoon would still have Hyunsik, it would be hard for them but— they still clearly loved one another. They’d be alright.  
  
“Good,” Sanghyuk said. He rather thought at least one of them deserved to get some rest.  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t bother getting back on the interstate, opted to take the streets. It would be faster, though Ilhoon’s apartment bordered on the shitty part of town, so it wasn’t pretty. Every other building was derelict, interposed with a handful of gritty, dangerous looking clubs. It amazed Sanghyuk, that even in this icy weather, and in such bad areas, young people still came to get drunk, or high. Even if tonight were few. Sanghyuk knew it wasn’t that late out yet, but the streets felt abnormally deserted and Sanghyuk’s wards were prickly, agitated.  
  
“I’m never going to have to go fishing in a shitty club again,” Ilhoon said suddenly as they passed a club called _Poison_ , one Sanghyuk recognized fishing in. The red glow of the sign faded, and Sanghyuk took one hand off the wheel to hold Ilhoon’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. Ilhoon gave him a wavery smile, it was halfway a grimace. “I’m okay.”  
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk replied, and Ilhoon squeezed his hand back.  
  
He turned down a new street, and a stab of unease went through him. There used to be a club ahead, but its signs were out, and there was no one lurking around, so it must have closed down. Even in this part of town, such a deadzone was unusual, and it made the hairs on Sanghyuk’s nape prickle.  
  
They passed a street lamp, and it flickered. It wasn’t unusual per se, but the next one they passed did the same, and then the next. His oak tree tattoo was fizzling.   
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said, turning to look behind them alertly.   
  
Sanghyuk found he was beginning to tremble, his heart already racing. “I’m going to turn around,” he said, already moving to pull over so he’d have the room to get the car around.  
  
“No,” Ilhoon said, undoing his seat belt and pulling out his stake. His voice was tight, high with fear. “The lamps are going out, just pull over so we can get out and—”  
  
There was a grating crash, Sanghyuk’s window shattering in a blast of glass, and Ilhoon screamed. In another beat Sanghyuk was lurching forward sharply as the car went careening into a lamppost, coming to a sudden, dead stop. Ilhoon, too, had gone lurching forward at the impact, but he hadn’t had his seatbelt on to rein him back in. The _crack_ of his head hitting the dashboard had been nearly drowned out by the sound of the car hitting the post.   
  
There was silence, stillness, Sanghyuk’s brain taking information in rapidly, and in odd, detached flashes. Ilhoon’s nose was bleeding, and he was slumped forward, hopefully unconscious and not dead. Sanghyuk touched the side of his neck urgently, feeling for a pulse, while at the same time he glanced over the front of the car. Ilhoon had a pulse, and the car wasn’t horribly mangled; he could, maybe, put them in reverse and get them the fuck out of there—  
  
Movement ahead, and Sanghyuk saw a form standing in the middle of the road. “Fuck,” he said, pulling his hand away from Ilhoon and looking around frantically. They’d never be able to drive away in time, he had to get out of the car, didn’t want to get dragged through the jagged remains of his window. But he found his door was dented inwards. The vampire hadn’t been going for his window, it had simply impacted his door so hard that it had buckled inwards, causing the glass to shatter. He couldn’t open it, and he didn’t want to waste time climbing over Ilhoon, so he wiggled between the two front seats to the back, not taking his eyes off the shadowy figure he could see through the windshield as he did.  
  
He had to look away, through, to scrabble at the handle of the backdoor. And by the time he made it out of the car, his dagger already in hand, the vampire was gone from the road. “Fuck,” he said again, head snapping around to search, but seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Above him, the streetlamp he’d run into flickered out.   
  
The sunburst on his back was fire on his skin, and when the hand fell on his right forearm, fingers digging in painfully, his wards went off, shimmering out of him in a wave of energy he felt down to his toes.  
  
The hand didn’t let go.  
  
Panic was bubbling up in Sanghyuk as his face snapped to look at the vampire’s face, recognizing the creature that had taken Sungjae’s life. His wards were still rippling with energy and yet the vampire’s hand on him did not budge, so he turned and kicked, hoping to catch it off gaurd. He may as well have kicked a wall. His foot hit the vamp’s knee but it didn’t seem to feel it, and its hand tightened painfully hard on Sanghyuk’s arm, which in turn made Sanghyuk’s wards go off again, but like Sanghyuk’s kick, it didn’t seem to even feel it.   
  
_No_ , Sanghyuk thought, twisting, but he couldn’t dislodge the vamp’s hand. The blade of his dagger glinted as he squirmed, and Sanghyuk was about to switch it to his other hand so he could, at the very least, swing it, but the vamp snarled, anger rolling off it in waves.   
  
The next thing Sanghyuk knew he was being pulled, turned, by the grasp the vampire had on his arm. It threw him up against the nearest building, yanking his arm so hard he was sure it had been pulled right out of the socket before letting him go. Sanghyuk should have seen this coming, it did the same to Sungjae—   
  
Sanghyuk’s head bounced off the brick and he gave a small cry, sliding down the wall. He didn’t catch himself properly and his foot got caught underneath him badly, twisting in a way that hurt but didn’t seep in through the pain in his head.   
  
The knife was still in his hand, he realized dimly, and he rolled over on the concrete, trying to find his bearings, and he knew it was coming, but through the fog he couldn’t remember how to block the kick the vampire landed in his stomach, the force of it making him gag. Before he could even try to gasp in air, to find his feet, the vampire had grabbed him roughly, yanking him up only to toss him down onto the asphalt.   
  
Sanghyuk slammed down on his back, the impact unforgiving and he choked on his scream. Then the vampire was kneeling on his chest, crushing him, and Ilhoon's prediction suddenly rang through his head, and all he could think was _not like this, god, please—_  
  
"Jaehwan," he gasped out, before he was being backhanded so hard he was surprised it didn't snap his neck. Blood filled his mouth.  
  
His head was beginning to swim from lack of air. Weakly, he lashed out with the knife, not knowing where to aim through the spots in his vision but just hoping to hit _something_. His knife made contact with— the vamp’s arm, fat lot of good that would do, but it drew blood, the cut smoking.   
  
The vampire hissed and grabbed Sanghyuk’s wrist so hard the bones ground together, but the sensation was muffled. He wheezed in air, but not enough. When the vamp reached with his free hand to tug the knife from Sanghyuk’s fingers, he was too weak to resist.   
  
There was desperation clawing through Sanghyuk, he needed _air_ , he couldn’t remember anything beyond that. The vampire felt like a ton of bricks against his ribcage. It smirked above him, grin widening as he gasped to no avail.  
  
“I can’t hear you,” it said, when Sanghyuk made a weak little sound. “Scream again, come on.”  
  
Sanghyuk clawed at the vamp’s hand, the one that was encasing his wrist still. He was going to black out, he was going to _die_ , and all he could think of was that he wasn’t ready, that he hadn’t said goodbye—  
  
The vamp moved off him, feet going to plant on either side of Sanghyuk’s torso, still kneeling down but blessedly no longer crushing Sanghyuk. He inhaled gratefully, over and over, gasping and coughing.   
  
“Almost lost you there,” the vamp said, still grinning, a twisted mockery of a smile.  
  
Sanghyuk wanted to claw its face off. He dragged in a huge lungful of air and screamed, “Jaehwan!”  
  
“Your hunting buddy can’t hear you,” the vamp said, thinking Sanghyuk was screaming for Ilhoon, unconscious in the car, and not for a vampire. Sanghyuk inhaled to shout again, but the vampire shoved down on Sanghyuk’s dislocated shoulder, hard, so when Sanghyuk screamed it was simply inarticulate with pain. “He’s out cold, you took care of that for me. Should I kill him too? Or should I leave you here for him to find when he wakes up, like I did the last of your lot. He cries very pretty, it’s fun to watch.”  
  
 _No_. Sanghyuk’s chest heaved. “My friends are going to rip you apart,” he gasped, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, knowing it was true. Jaehwan would—  
  
Oh god, Jaehwan would break. He’d hold it together long enough to track this vamp down, but then he’d— he’d—  
  
The vampire was laughing, and the sound, horrible and grating, made Sanghyuk’s teeth chatter. “Doubtful, but even if it were so, that isn’t going to save _you_ ,” the vampire said, and Sanghyuk’s wards went off in a ripple that simply made the vamp grin grotesquely wider. Sanghyuk didn’t understand, the creature clearly felt the energy, but was unaffected. It wasn’t an Elimia, didn’t move right. “Now, be a good little bloodbag and look at me.”  
  
Its voice dropped as it said that, and already Sanghyuk’s anti-glamour tattoo was warming in a sharp stab, and he could feel the pull anyway. But he squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face away. The asphalt was hard against his back, he had nowhere to cringe.   
  
“Don’t make this harder on yourself, I can do this cleanly, you know,” it was murmuring, and it echoed slightly around the edges. Sanghyuk was forgetting how to breathe.  
  
He remembered the Reconstruction, remembered Sungjae, giving in to the glamour, remembered watching as the vampire let it all drop after he’d gotten that _yes_. Had let Sungjae suffer until the end.  
  
“You’re a liar,” Sanghyuk hissed, anger welling up amidst his fear. The vampire pushed on his shoulder again, and Sanghyuk choked off his scream, swallowed it down. “You’re a liar,” he repeated, gasping it out, “you’re a liar and you’re going to die in agony.” God, Sanghyuk hoped that when Jaehwan finally got ahold of this vampire he fucking _skinned_ it.  
  
The thought was a bit jarring, as Sanghyuk reflected on the fact that— the Jaehwan he loved was so soft, so sweet, and that Jaehwan— that Jaehwan was going to die with him, with Sanghyuk. Jaehwan would go back, go back to being cold, calculated Jaehwan, the kind capable of cruelty, of torture. Sanghyuk’s heart ached at the thought of Jaehwan, _his_ Jaehwan, who had come so far, changed so much, who had finally started smiling with light behind his eyes—  
  
The vampire’s mouth was brushing against his ear, and Sanghyuk recoiled. “You’re beginning to piss me off,” it murmured, the words full of glamour like it was speaking to a lover, but the words chilled Sanghyuk to his bones. “Look at me.”  
  
It pulled away, and Sanghyuk knew its face was still close, but he didn’t give in to the pull, kept his eyes shut tightly, biting on his lower lip to keep his concentration.   
  
The vampire made a soft, growling sound, and then grabbed at Sanghyuk’s hand. There was a momentary scuffle as Sanghyuk tried to evade the touch, but he couldn’t see, and the creature had him pinned and was too strong. It wrestled him down so one arm was pinned beneath its knee, and the other it tugged up to— Sanghyuk didn’t know what. He could heard slight movement.   
  
It grasped his fingers, straightening them out in its grasp. Sanghyuk tried, but he couldn’t tug his hand free, the effort was hurting his wrist. The vampire blew on his fingertips, and chuckled as Sanghyuk shivered. “You sure you don’t want to open your eyes?” it asked.  
  
“Burn in hell,” Sanghyuk whispered. Maybe he could go somewhere, somewhere inside, tune this all out—  
  
Pain. Sharp, sudden pain, digging into his skin, prying under the nail of his forefinger. Sanghyuk shrieked, eyes opening on instinct, to see the vampire pushing the tip of his dagger, his own dagger, under his nail.   
  
“I always get my way,” it murmured. It pulled the dagger back only to press it under the next nail, and smiled, a soft smile, as Sanghyuk shouted again. “You scream pretty. What a pair you and your partner are. Do it again.”  
  
Sanghyuk bit down on his lower lip, teeth cutting in as he held back his scream as the knife slid under the next nail. He still made a sound, back arching, unable to help himself, but he held the scream in. The knife pulled back and Sanghyuk’s head lolled to the side, so he was blinking through blurry tears at the empty street.   
  
“Your blood smells good,” the vampire said thickly, “come on, let me have a taste. It’ll be over so much faster.”  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk murmured. He could feel a fogginess settling over him. “No matter how many pieces of me you carve off— I’m not going to let you bite me.” He blinked, and new tears spilled out. He hoped he’d be able to hold to those words. This wasn’t going to be clean. _It rarely is_ , Hongbin had said.  
  
There were going to be tear tracks on his corpse.  
  
The vampire growled, finally snapping. “If that’s your choice, well then—” it said, and shifted its grip on the dagger, raised it, pushed Sanghyuk’s head back, exposing his throat for the blade. Fear welled up in Sanghyuk, but at least it was over, it was over, oh god, it was _over_ —   
  
Something barreled out from the darkness to their right and rammed into the vampire’s side, toppling it off and away from Sanghyuk.  
  
Sanghyuk’s shoulder screamed in pain as he sat up lightning fast, head whipping to the side.   
  
_Jaehwan_ , was his first thought, but when he locked onto the pair of brawling creatures, he caught flashes of a different face.   
  
“Wonshik,” he whispered, eyes widening.   
  
Sanghyuk had never seen two vampires fighting, it was unlike what he might have thought. It was less fighting and more just— dodging, slipping away before the other could get a grip to strike. Wonshik was slower, sloppier, if a vampire could ever be called such. It was clear that though the other vampire wasn’t an Elimia, it was still older than Wonshik.   
  
Sanghyuk had never seen Wonshik’s fangs, but he could see them now as Wonshik snarled, arching away as his opponent tried to sink the dagger into his chest. Sanghyuk’s dagger. Oh god, if it killed Wonshik with Sanghyuk’s dagger—  
  
Wonshik got a hold on the vampire’s wrist, but it was too strong, and it grabbed him in turn, tossing him away from itself much the same way it had tossed Sanghyuk, but with considerably more force. Wonshik landed on his back on the sharp edge of the curb, and his head bounced off the concrete, leaving a smear of blood. He didn’t get up. Sanghyuk had heard his spine snap with the force of the fall.   
  
Before the vamp could move in on Wonshik, still holding Sanghyuk’s dagger, Hongbin was there. Sanghyuk flashed back to a documentary he’d watched on tigers a few weeks ago, how they’d caught the tiger chasing down prey and then pouncing, the way it leapt and sunk its teeth into the thick neck of a deer. That was what the scene in front of Sanghyuk felt like. Hongbin dashed out of the shadows, smooth as silk, and then his face was buried in the vamp’s throat, clawed hands grasping its shoulders.  
  
The vamp gave a choked cry and grabbed Hongbin by the hair and ripped his face away from its throat. Hongbin took a fair bit of skin and muscle with him, mouth smeared with blood so heavily it looked nearly black on his skin. The vamp didn’t let go of Hongbin’s hair, tugging in such a way that Hongbin was forced to arch back, though he snarled the whole time, squirming.   
  
Then the vamp raised the dagger, as it had done with Sanghyuk, and Wonshik made a choked noise, still healing and unable to move. Sanghyuk struggled up onto his knees, knowing he wouldn’t be able to move fast enough—  
  
The dagger came down, flashing in the low light. Hongbin was ready for it, reaching out and knocking the swing down so the blade sunk into his side instead of his ribcage, his heart. He screamed, body jolting from the pain, but then he was gritting his teeth and grabbing the vamp’s wrist, so it couldn’t wrench the blade free.   
  
With one hand tangled in Hongbin’s hair and the other being held immobile around the hilt of Sanghyuk’s dagger, still buried and smoking in Hongbin’s skin, the vamp had nothing to block with when Hongbin brought his hand— his bare hand, his _empty hand_ — up and into its solar plexus, tearing upwards into its rib cage so Hongbin could _grab its heart and rip it out_.  
  
There was blood everywhere, it splattered out in thick drops when Hongbin wrenched his hand free of the vamp’s chest. There was blood all the way up to the middle of Hongbin’s forearm, like he’d dipped his hand into a vat of the stuff. But no, no, he had just manually ripped the heart out of a vampire.  
  
The vamp’s body fell to the pavement, and a few beats later, Hongbin dropped the heart too. The noise it made when it hit the blacktop had Sanghyuk swallowing down a gag.  
  
Wonshik was gaping up at Hongbin from where he was slumped on the asphalt. Hongbin swayed, reaching a trembling hand up to where the hilt of the dagger was sticking out of his side.   
  
“I can—” Sanghyuk began, but Hongbin was already tugging the blade free, whimpering softly as he did so. The wound smoked, blood flowing out, but he would heal.   
  
“Sorry,” Hongbin said softly, managing to look sheepish even covered in blood. “I didn’t— that wasn’t clean, I know, but desperate times, and all that. And if I’m a vampire then I am going to damn well take advantage of the perks offered by that.”  
  
Perks being the ability to rip hearts right out of chests apparently. Sanghyuk felt sick, remembering Jaehwan doing just that— but in this case, he couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for this creature.  
  
Wonshik sat up, spinal column having apparently healed, though he didn’t seem steady. He tore his eyes away from Hongbin with great difficulty so he could look at Sanghyuk. “Kiddo,” he rasped.  
  
Sanghyuk swayed, feeling so weak, so fuzzy. Wonshik was there before he could collapse back onto the asphalt, holding him up with surprisingly gentle hands. “How did you know I was here,” Sanghyuk mumbled.  
  
“We didn’t, we were hunting,” Wonshik said, and Sanghyuk found that very funny, for some reason. “You’re— you’re pretty banged up, Sanghyuk. Where’s your phone? We’ll text HQ, you need medical attention—”  
  
Morphine sounded fucking fantastic right now, but Sanghyuk was shaking his head. He felt dizzy. “Not yet— look around, Wonshik, how am I going to explain this? My good old vampire buddies came in and saved the day? No, no, someone— someone has to clean this up, we need a plan.” He looked to the car. “Ilhoon—”  
  
“He’s alive,” Hongbin said, cocking his head to the side. “But still unconscious. He probably needs medical attention too.”   
  
_Probably_ , Sanghyuk thought. “I need Jaehwan.”  
  
Wonshik and Hongbin looked at one another. “Sanghyuk—” Wonshik began, and Sanghyuk made a little noise.  
  
“I need to see him, I— I don’t feel good. And you two need to clean this mess up,” Sanghyuk said, looking to the mangled corpse.   
  
“I think he has a concussion,” Hongbin whispered, and Wonshik gave him a speaking glance.   
  
They didn’t _understand_. “I need to tell Jaehwan I love him,” Sanghyuk blurted, desperate, and then his face crumpled as he began to cry in earnest. Fuck, he’d been so frightened.   
  
“Oh, god,” Wonshik said, and he carefully hauled Sanghyuk to his feet. Sanghyuk went limply, legs feeling weak. His shoulder was still dislocated, and it hurt, but there was a sharp pain in his ankle as he hobbled beside Wonshik to the car that was almost worse. His wrist too, was aching. How many fractures did he have, he wondered.   
  
Wonshik settled him in the backseat of the car— it was still on, the engine humming. The heater was blasting. Ilhoon was still slumped, but his nose had stopped bleeding, and his chest was rising and falling slowly. Outside the car, Wonshik and Hongbin were murmuring to one another. Hongbin was idly licking the blood off his hand.   
  
Sanghyuk inhaled, and the air shuddered through him. He’d lived.


	2. Chapter 2

Wonshik helped Sanghyuk hobble into the house, their house, the sharp sweet scent of vampires engulfing Sanghyuk and oddly bringing comfort. Hongbin followed behind them, cradling a still-unconscious Ilhoon in his arms. When they reached the living room, Hongbin carefully laid Ilhoon down on the couch, while Sanghyuk eyed the plush armchair, wondered if sitting down would hurt less.   
  
He sensed movement at the mouth of the hallway, and then Jaehwan’s voice; “Oh, you’re all here, I thought I heard—”   
  
A moment later Sanghyuk was spinning, being pulled away from Wonshik and turned roughly to face Jaehwan. He cried out in pain at the jostling of his shoulder, and it was red hot again, bringing with it a wave of nausea. At the sound Jaehwan went still, hands gentling.   
  
“What happened?” he asked, his voice very soft, almost dangerously so. Sanghyuk avoided looking at him, although the rove of Jaehwan’s eyes on him, taking in his injuries, was almost painful in itself.  
  
“That vampire— it got him,” Wonshik said, very meek, like he was guilty, though he was most definitely not. Sanghyuk didn’t blame him though, Jaehwan was all sharp glass edges right now.  
  
“I thought you and Ilhoon were going to stick together,” Jaehwan said, still addressing Sanghyuk. His voice was so soft that Sanghyuk simply couldn’t work out what he was thinking. It unnerved him, he didn’t like it. He didn’t know if Jaehwan was angry with him.  
  
“We did, it got us while I was driving,” Sanghyuk said, and fuck, talking hurt. On the drive over the split in his lip had begin to crust over, harden, and each movement felt like it was tearing it open all over again. “It’s dead. Hongbin ripped its heart out.”  
  
Jaehwan looked over Sanghyuk’s shoulder at Hongbin, presumably. His face gave nothing away, there was no expression other than a slight frown, but it was less like he was emotionless and more like he was— holding onto a storm inside him tightly. “Thank you,” he said, and Sanghyuk swayed. Jaehwan, who seemed to have realized his shoulder was out of place, braced his hands on Sanghyuk’s waist. “He needs to go to a hospital.”  
  
“He does,” Wonshik agreed, sounding tired, “but the scene we left behind is a mess, and we need to clean it up before he calls in the cavalry. And he also needs— some kind of story, to tell them.”  
  
“I want the body brought here,” Jaehwan murmured. Sanghyuk glanced at Wonshik, to see him nodding unhappily. “Go, then, I will tend to Sanghyuk’s wounds as best I can in the meanwhile.”  
  
Wonshik held his hand out to Hongbin, who took it. Before they could leave, Sanghyuk rasped, “Thank you, Hongbin, Wonshik. We’d be dead, if not for you.”  
  
Hongbin didn’t smile, but Wonshik did, a little, sappy thing. “I care about you, kiddo,” he murmured. “I’m glad we got it.”  
  
Sanghyuk was too, but he wondered what that meant now, about his death. He was so tired.  
  
When Wonshik and Hongbin turned again to leave, Sanghyuk let them. Once the front door had closed behind them, Jaehwan reached one of his hands up and cupped Sanghyuk’s cheek lightly, the cheek that had remained unscathed in the altercation. He tipped Sanghyuk’s face to the side so that he could look at the damage more closely, and Sanghyuk let him, because his hand was soft and cool and his face was hot and he felt dangerously close to crying again.   
  
“What happened?” Jaehwan asked again.   
  
“I don’t know,” Sanghyuk said. It felt shameful to admit it. “It came out of nowhere, we were driving and then something slammed into my door and I— I lost control of the car. It was flickering around, taunting me, and Ilhoon was out cold. I— there was no time, it all happened so fast, it grabbed me and didn’t let go, threw me against a building, and my ankle got caught underneath me when I fell, and my shoulder—”  
  
“It’s dislocated,” Jaehwan interrupted, his voice a little harder now.   
  
“I know.” Sanghyuk closed his eyes for a few moments, trying to gather himself. Jaehwan’s thumb was gently stroking his cheek and he felt even more shaky now.  
  
When Jaehwan spoke again it was the barest of whispers. “And your hand?”  
  
Sanghyuk didn’t want to tell Jaehwan that part, but he was too tired to fight anymore. “It— it wanted to glamour me, to feed from me, and I wouldn’t open my eyes so—” He broke off, swallowing hard, unable to recount it anymore.   
  
Jaehwan’s thumb stilled. “Sanghyuk,” he said. The intensity in his voice made Sanghyuk shiver. “You really should have gone to a hospital. I know you’re thinking about this in terms of your own cover, but—”  
  
“It’s not just that,” Sanghyuk whispered. He looked at Jaehwan pleadingly. “I came here because—” He couldn't finish that sentence, shying away from the thought. “I don’t know why,” he finished lamely. “I— just— Jaehwan, I need— please—” The words stuck in his throat, drying out, and his face twisted.  
  
Jaehwan was silent for a minute. Sanghyuk could feel himself starting to shake all over, his bottom lip trembling as he waited for— for something, some condemnation, something that would leave him burning even more with shame than he already was. But in the end, Jaehwan merely stepped closer, his mouth pressing a cool kiss to the center of Sanghyuk’s forehead.  
  
For the first time, Sanghyuk realised that Jaehwan was shaking too.  
  
“I will help you set your shoulder,” he said. “It will hurt.”  
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk whispered. “I’m sorry I’m making you do this.”   
  
Jaehwan didn’t reply to that. He stepped back and, quickly, gently, like he was handling a china doll, lifted Sanghyuk into his arms, somehow managing to avoid jostling him. Sanghyuk would have protested, but taking all of the weight off his ankle, rather than just some, felt glorious.   
  
Jaehwan moved him at vampire speed, so fast that everything turned into a blur, and yet Sanghyuk barely felt anything. In fact, being deposited onto Jaehwan’s bed hurt more than the journey to it had. “Oof,” he said, before relaxing into the softness of the multitude of pillows on Jaehwan’s bed.  
  
“Stay here,” Jaehwan ordered. He disappeared into his bathroom and a moment later Sanghyuk heard the tell-tale sound of the water running into his bathtub. Sanghyuk sat up a little, surprised, and then subsided when his shoulder gave a particularly painful twinge.   
  
Jaehwan’s bed was so soft, so inviting, but he knew better than to get too comfortable in it. He could not sleep on a dislocated shoulder, and neither did he particularly want to get blood all over the sheets. Not this time, at least. Besides, before he could truly start on the process of relaxing, Jaehwan reappeared in the room.   
  
“We will set your shoulder,” he said, sitting on the bed next to Sanghyuk. “And then you will take a bath and clean up your face.”   
  
Sanghyuk nodded, unable to trust himself with words. Jaehwan moved closer, one hand splaying across Sanghyuk’s upper back, bracing. “Would you like me to do it now?” he asked.   
  
“Yes,” Sanghyuk managed.  
  
Jaehwan hesitated. “Would you like me to do it fast?”   
  
This time, Sanghyuk could only nod again. And then, not even a moment later, the pain in his shoulder was blinding, and he screamed, jerking away automatically from that which was causing it. Jaehwan snatched him close, folding Sanghyuk into his arms and burying his face in his hair, while Sanghyuk gasped in lungfuls of air, trying to remember how to breathe again.   
  
“I am sorry,” Jaehwan whispered, his arms just that bit too tight for comfort. Sanghyuk didn’t care. “I am so sorry, love.”   
  
“It’s okay,” Sanghyuk choked out. “I— I asked you to, it needed to be done.”   
  
Jaehwan held him long enough that Sanghyuk’s breathing calmed, his shaking almost under control again. Only then did Jaehwan lift him into his arms again and carry him, human speed, into the bathroom.   
  
The bath was filled with water and sweet smelling salts; it looked like nothing more than one of Jaehwan’s post-sex triumph baths. Sanghyuk groaned when he saw it, his sore, aching body crying out for such indulgence. Jaehwan let him down on the floor, helped him pull his shirt over his still painful shoulder, tug his pants down efficiently, and then lifted him once again, ignoring Sanghyuk’s protests, and lowered him slowly into the water.   
  
It felt as good as it had looked, and Sanghyuk moaned aloud, sinking into the warmth of it until the water was lapping at his chin and he could barely see through the steam rising from it. “I might fall asleep,” he mumbled.  
  
“Do not, I am concerned about that head wound,” Jaehwan said. Sanghyuk tipped his head to the side and found that Jaehwan was kneeling by the side of the tub, his arms resting on the rim. His hand started stroking through Sanghyuk’s hair gently and Sanghyuk whimpered. Jaehwan shushed him gently, cupping some water in his hands and then using it to begin the process of washing the blood from Sanghyuk’s face. He was gentle, so much more gentle than Sanghyuk had ever experienced him being. “I am glad this creature is dead, and yet I wish I could have gotten to it first,” he murmured. He gently touched Sanghyuk’s split lip, his tender cheekbone. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”  
  
Sanghyuk shook his head a little, reaching up so he could snag Jaehwan’s hand and squeeze it tightly. “I was lying, earlier,” he said.   
  
Jaehwan frowned. “Lying?”  
  
Sanghyuk would be lucky, he knew, to make it through this conversation without crying. “When I said that I didn’t know why I came here. It was a lie. I know why.”   
  
Jaehwan’s face was unreadable, his hand falling to trail lightly in the water. “Why?”   
  
“Because when I looked up at that vampire about to kill me, I was so frightened, Jaehwan. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. I thought— this was it, this was the end I’d been waiting for all this time, and all I could think about was you, and how much you’d changed, grown, the way you smile now, sweet, soft, the way you hold me, kiss me, and how after I died— how _sad_ you were going to be, how it would all crumble and I— it hurt, Jaehwan, to think of you losing the light in you, all over again. I want you to be happy so badly. I want to be happy with you. I don’t want to die, just in general, but I also don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to do that to you.”  
  
Jaehwan looked stricken, and when he opened his mouth, all that emitted was a croaking sound. It made Sanghyuk laugh a little, which was when he realised that it wasn’t just a figment of his imagination and his ribs were definitely a little tender, possibly fractured.   
  
When Jaehwan spoke, he sounded, to Sanghyuk’s ears, as broken as he had done when he had first told Sanghyuk that he loved him. “Sanghyuk, surely you know, we both know, that your death will not _sadden_ me, it will _devastate_ me. Perhaps I should not tell you this, but I’m not— I’m not strong enough to bear such a burden. I plan to follow you into death as soon as your heart stills.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s face paled, his stomach dropping sickly. “You can’t— can’t do that—”   
  
“I have lived a very long time, Sanghyuk,” Jaehwan whispered, his fingers still trailing over the water’s surface. “I cannot go back to the way I was before, now, it is too late. Too much of me is in you. When you’re gone— you shall take the better parts of me with you. I cannot return to that half life.”  
  
Sanghyuk’s mouth twisted, eyes welling with new tears. How long had Jaehwan been planning this. “Please don’t.”  
  
Jaehwan’s eyes roved over his face. “I shouldn’t have told you,” he finally said softly, sighing.   
  
Sanghyuk was shaking his head. The thought of Jaehwan dying— no, no, God, Sanghyuk couldn’t let any more people he loved die. He’d come so close tonight, to losing his own life, to killing Jaehwan by proxy. Would Jaehwan have let himself burn in the sunlight, put a dagger in his own heart—  
  
Sanghyuk sobbed, choking on it. “I can’t stand the thought of you dying,”  
  
“Love, you won’t be here to see it happen.” Jaehwan said, like that would be a comfort. He pressed gentle kisses over Sanghyuk’s trembling eyelids, his lashes, damp with tears, brushing against Jaehwan’s lips.  
  
“Don’t, Jaehwan, please, I’ll— I can’t—” Sanghyuk gasped. He grabbed at the front of Jaehwan’s shirt desperately, water and blood soaking into the fabric. “I care too much about you.”  
  
“I know,” Jaehwan whispered, letting his forehead rest against Sanghyuk’s.  
  
“You don’t,” Sanghyuk whimpered. “I— Jaehwan— I called out for you, when— when that vampire— I needed you, had to see you again because— Jaehwan, I didn’t want to leave you without telling you I— I—”  
  
Jaehwan had pulled back a little, eyes wide, slightly fearful. “Sanghyuk?”  
  
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Sanghyuk said, shaking so hard his teeth were chattering. “It— when you sang for me— oh, Jaehwan, I’m— I’m in love with you— please— please don’t give up on me—”  
  
Jaehwan made the softest noise, a little gasp, and Sanghyuk was crying in earnest now, his body shaking uncontrollably, hands clutching Jaehwan to him, half-dragging him into the water with him. Jaehwan didn’t say a word, for once, just held Sanghyuk back; and neither of them said anything about the fresh blood that they found on Sanghyuk from Jaehwan’s own tears.   
  
——  
  
It was quiet, so Ilhoon was dragged back into consciousness not by noise around him, but rather by the splitting pain in his head. He hissed out a breath, and someone shushed him. Not abrasively, just a gentle whisper. Then something pressed to his face, something warm and damp, swiping gently over his cheek, and Ilhoon winced away.  
  
The movement made him a bit dizzy, and he blinked his eyes open. He could vaguely see Sanghyuk sitting beside him, above him, holding a washcloth in his left hand.   
  
“I thought you were a vampire licking my face,” Ilhoon said, and he tasted blood in his mouth.  
  
“They’re not cats; they don’t have rough tongues,” Sanghyuk replied, very softly, and Ilhoon supposed he would know. They were somewhere dark, but Ilhoon could see the bruises across Sanghyuk’s face, the cuts in his lips— the gauze wrapped thickly over his right hand.   
  
Ilhoon was laying down, and he shifted, making an attempt to sit up, but he gave up quickly on that, his head spinning too much, hurting. “Where are we?” Ilhoon asked.   
  
“Jaehwan’s house,” Sanghyuk said, and for the first time Ilhoon realized he could hear very soft voices, murmuring, and there was movement, behind Sanghyuk. The oily nature of that movement— it made shivers skitter over Ilhoon’s skin. “We had to get off the street, give them time to clean up the scene.”  
  
“What scene?” Ilhoon asked, focusing beyond Sanghyuk. There was a large hallway, and he could see Wonshik standing with his arms crossed, Hongbin next to him, bending over and talking to Jaehwan, who was kneeling on the floor beside—  
  
“It’s dead,” Sanghyuk said softly, not looking behind himself. “Hongbin tore its heart out.”  
  
Ilhoon could see the red of thickly clotted blood, the body laying on a tarp. Jaehwan was plucking around, pulling jewelry off the— corpse? Did vampires leave corpses when they were already dead anyway?   
  
“It used charms, like I thought,” Jaehwan said, holding handfuls of necklaces, bracelets, the _zing_ of them practically tangible. “And it— it carved wards into its own chest, it didn’t have much longer to live, judging by the sight of them.” Jaehwan flicked the shirt away. “There’s a lot of damage, the skin burning away in areas, from absorbing the energy of your wards.”  
  
Ilhoon took that in, looking back at Sanghyuk’s face. “I wish I could have seen it die,” he murmured, then his gaze dropped to Sanghyuk’s hand. “What happened?”  
  
Sanghyuk’s mouth twisted, and he put the washcloth down in the basin of water sitting on the coffee table. “It hit my door, and sent us right into a lamppost— you got knocked out, but I think you’re okay—”  
  
“Later,” Jaehwan interrupted, standing and coming over. He dropped all the charms onto the coffee table, a pile of gold and jewels, a few made of leather. “You can tell him the full story later. Right now we need to get you two medical attention.”  
  
“Right,” Ilhoon said, “we’ll just call an ambulance and they can bring the stretchers here— wherever here is.” Jaehwan’s house. They were in Jaehwan’s house. Ilhoon was laying on a velvet couch, could see the furnishings of this place were gothic. They were almost certainly underground. “1500 Vampire Avenue.”  
  
“No,” Jaehwan said, frowning at his sarcasm. “We’ll need to have your people come for you elsewhere— and they can decide what needs to be done.”  
  
“And what are we supposed to tell them?” Ilhoon asked, watching out of the corner of his eye as Hongbin and Wonshik began to wrap the body in the tarp.  
  
“You are going to pretend you never woke up, after being knocked out in the car,” Jaehwan said, “that is all you need to worry about.” He sat beside Sanghyuk, on the edge of the coffee table. Their eyes met, and they shared a world, in that gaze. “I have a plan. It isn’t a great plan, but it is a plan.” He, very gently, held Sanghyuk’s bandaged hand in both of his. “I will have to knock both of you out for it.”  
  
Sanghyuk swallowed visibly. “I trust you.”  
  
“I don’t,” Ilhoon said, squinting at Jaehwan. “What is your plan?”  
  
“I can’t tell you— I worry if you know you will not be able to lie, later,” Jaehwan said simply.  
  
“Jaehwan, we need to move,” Hongbin said, straightening and putting his hands on his hips. “We have a lot to do, before dawn.”  
  
“Now, then,” Jaehwan murmured. He moved one of his hands so he was cupping the back of Sanghyuk’s neck. “Contact me, as soon as you are able.”  
  
“I will,” Sanghyuk promised, and then Jaehwan leaned in, whispering the words of a spell, and Ilhoon could see the magic spill out of his lips, just faintly, like a vapor. It brushed over Sanghyuk’s face, and then Sanghyuk was slumping, head lolling back as his eyes fluttered closed. Jaehwan carefully laid him back, across the coffee table. Sanghyuk’s pretty, bruised face was peaceful, and Ilhoon could see his chest rising and falling.  
  
Jaehwan’s gaze slid to Ilhoon. “Your turn, little one.”  
  
Ilhoon tensed, pushing back further into the corner of the couch as Jaehwan leaned towards him. “I can play dead well enough without a spell.”  
  
“I’m sure you’re excellent at faking it,” Jaehwan murmured, grabbing Ilhoon’s jaw. “But I don’t trust you either, darling. You can’t know where we are— you can’t know how to come to and from this place.”  
  
“And here I was hoping to get some leverage,” Ilhoon said, grasping Jaehwan’s wrist, nails digging in.   
  
Jaehwan grinned, and his fangs were run out, just a bit. The sight of them made Ilhoon’s wards spark off, and it didn’t make a difference. “Not tonight.”  
  
Jaehwan leaned in close, and when he whispered the spell, Ilhoon felt his breath ghosting over his lips. Then there was coldness spreading through him, slowing him down, in body and mind. It pulled him back into darkness with an insistence he couldn’t fight.


	3. Chapter 3

  
Sanghyuk could see daylight. His eyes were closed, but the brightness of it bled through the delicate skin of his eyelids, turning his world fiery orange.  
  
He blinked his eyes open, feeling like he was fighting through a fog. The room was bright, very bright, lights above him, cheery sunshine cascading in through a wide window, reflecting off the white tiles and walls. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a room so bright.  
  
A sound, to his left, and then Ilhoon was there, standing beside his— bed. He was in a bed. A hospital bed. Ilhoon had a nasty purple bruise over his forehead, bleeding into his hairline, but other than that looked alright. “You’re finally awake,” he said. “I was starting to worry.”  
  
Sanghyuk opened his mouth, found it was dry, his tongue feeling thick, cottony. It was utterly unpleasant. “Water,” he croaked, hand twitching toward the table at his bedside. Then he winced, as the motion jostled the IV in his arm.   
  
Ilhoon poured him a little cup of water from the pitcher on the table, held it up to Sanghyuk’s lips so he could drink from it. Once it was empty, Sanghyuk tried again.   
  
“Hospital?” he asked, leaning back into the pillows as his world swayed. He hadn’t been this out of it at Jaehwan’s, everything had been so sharp. But he’d been hopped up on adrenaline then, and now he just felt so— drugged. Of course he was drugged.   
  
Ilhoon could read him, like he was words on a page. “Yeah. You’re on a lot of morphine, because you got pretty mangled.”  
  
“How am I here?” Sanghyuk asked, wincing. The medication dulled everything very well, but there was still pain. “What happened?”   
  
“We couldn’t treat you back at HQ— your wounds were too bad, and the official story here is you’re an illegal hunter, that the VCF has brought in,” Ilhoon said, and he smiled, humorless and feral. “Kris has made it all very legitimate in appearance, and I had to put my foot down to stop them handcuffing you to the bed for the sake of _realism_.”   
  
Sanghyuk shivered. “Thank you.”  
  
“As for what happened—” Ilhoon said, and Sanghyuk frowned, because that question had already been answered. “I was going to ask you that.”  
  
There was a lead, there, and then it clicked. The attack. Yes. The room was surely bugged in some fashion.   
  
“I don’t remember,” Sanghyuk said, and Ilhoon’s eyes flashed in warning. Perhaps that wouldn’t fly, wasn’t going to be that easy. “I— we were driving, something hit my— my door— the car—”  
  
“We haven’t found it,” Ilhoon said, and Sanghyuk took a moment to actually feel sad about that. Perhaps it had needed to be disposed of, for the story, for their safety, but still. He’d liked having it.  
  
Sanghyuk swallowed. “I ran into something— a lightpost— you got knocked out.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ilhoon said. “I woke up in HQ.” There was something to Ilhoon’s expression that Sanghyuk couldn’t read, couldn’t fight through the fog enough to decipher it. “Kris has been really anxious to talk to you, about what happened.” His eyes slid to the side, glancing, and Sanghyuk followed his gaze to see his phone sitting on the bedside table.   
  
Anxiety welled up enough to disturb the fog settled heavy over Sanghyuk’s brain. “We don’t know what happened?”  
  
Ilhoon rolled his shoulders— also an anxious gesture. “There’s theories, but I’ll let Kris explain when he gets here.” At Sanghyuk’s look, he added, “I contacted him when you stirred; he should be here very soon.”  
  
Sanghyuk closed his eyes, then found himself wincing, his ribs giving a twinge. And when he moved to set a hand against them, pain flared up in his wrist. There was a soft cast on it, twining around his palm and going almost all the way up to his elbow.  
  
“Do you want the list?” Ilhoon asked, to shift the topic onto something less dangerous, for whoever was listening in.  
  
“Yeah,” Sanghyuk said, already wanting to go back to sleep.  
  
“You have a concussion, three fractured ribs, and your wrist also has several hairline fractures, so does your ankle, in addition to being sprained. Your shoulder was dislocated, so there’s some strain there, and bruising, and the— your hand. Most of your nails settled back into place, but the— whatever it was, dug under your pinky nail far enough that the nail couldn’t be reattached. It may or may not grow back.”  
  
“There goes my career as a hand model,” Sanghyuk said faintly. Well. All in all it could definitely be a lot worse.  
  
Ilhoon nodded to his face. “Your lip needed a stitch, and you also have a very slight fracture over your cheekbone. So your career as a model in general would have been shot, I’m afraid.”  
  
Of everything to send him spiralling back, it was the mention of his lip, his cheekbone, that made him flash violently back into the moment. “The vamp hit me— backhanded me, when I started screaming,” Sanghyuk whispered, and Ilhoon’s mouth twisted.   
  
He was saved from having to reply by a knock, and then a beat later the door to the room was swinging inward. There was a slim woman, most likely a nurse, and she gestured Kris into the room. A man followed on Kris’s heels, far shorter and softer in appearance, and very tidy. Sanghyuk did not know his face.   
  
The nurse didn’t come into the room, opting to back out and shut the door. She seemed skittish, but Sanghyuk couldn’t blame her; ordinary humans were often unnerved by the VCF, and everything their jobs entailed.  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Kris said, giving Sanghyuk a once over, “it’s good to see you conscious.” He was holding some files in his arms, which potentially didn’t bode well.  
  
“I wish I could say it was good to be conscious, but everything hurts, I’m afraid,” Sanghyuk said. Now that Ilhoon had mentioned it, Sanghyuk could definitely feel the tug of the stitch in his lip, when he spoke.   
  
“I will try to be brief,” Kris said, then gestured to the man at his side. “This is Junmyeon, he’s a captain in the VCF, and along with myself has been handling the case of this rogue vampire, on that end. I felt it only fair to keep him in the loop, even if things seem to have come to an end on our side.”  
  
Sanghyuk tensed, a little, even though he knew it surely was safe. Kris wouldn’t have involved an actual VFC officer if he thought there was any danger to his own agents in doing so. “Hello,” Sanghyuk said, a little stiff, and Junmyeon nodded. He didn’t seem unfriendly, just very— prim. That was a good word for it. He was a sharp contrast to Ilhoon, still standing at Sanghyuk’s bedside with his arms crossed.  
  
“Can you tell us what happened to you, Sanghyuk?” Kris asked. His voice was oddly subdued. Perhaps the extend of Sanghyuk’s injuries were enough to throw any suspicion off of him.  
  
“Ilhoon told you, probably, about the— the car, running into the light post,” Sanghyuk ventured, and Kris nodded. “He got knocked out, and I— I didn’t know what to do, but I rather thought that by the time I backed the car out and began to drive away, the vampire — if it was a vampire — would have caught up and dragged me through the broken window. I didn’t want that, thought it might be better if I just— got out of the car with my dagger and tried to fight.” Sanghyuk swallowed, letting his head loll to the side, so he could stare out the window. The sky was bright, and blue, the clouds fluffy and white. It was like a painting. “You can probably guess from the state of me, that it didn’t work out so well.”  
  
“How did you get away?” Junmyeon asked, and his voice, somehow, matched him perfectly.   
  
Sanghyuk looked back at them. “I didn’t,” he said simply. “I don’t— I thought I was going to die. It— it tossed me around, I hit my head on the side of a building, and then again when it— it threw me down to the asphalt, and it backhanded me hard across the face when I started screaming. I was dizzy, out of it from all that. And then it— it sort of— kneeled on my chest, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get it off.” It was hard, he found, to talk about it. He didn’t have to fake the fear in his voice, the way his hands had begun to tremble. “I was so frightened, and I just remember thinking that I couldn’t pass out, I couldn’t, that it would be all over— but I couldn’t _breathe_ —”  
  
“Sanghyuk,” Ilhoon said softly, soothingly, and Sanghyuk broke off, squeezing his eyes shut and taking several deep breaths, even though it made his ribs twinge.   
  
“You lost consciousness?” Kris asked, a gentle nudge.  
  
Sanghyuk felt so tired. “Yeah,” he said, because it technically was true, he’d just omitted some of the stuff that had happened in the in-between.  
  
It was Junmyeon who spoke next, his voice very soft. “And what about your hand?”  
  
The fingers of Sanghyuk’s right hand twitched inside their gauze casing. He didn’t want to think about this. “It wanted to feed from me. I told it no,” he whispered, and Junmyeon looked away. Kris just looked to be made of stone. “How did— what happened—” He looked to Ilhoon, as if wondering if Ilhoon had awoken and saved them both, but Ilhoon shook his head, and it was Kris who answered.  
  
“We can’t know for certain, but we seem to have a fairly good picture,” he was saying as he opened the file folder in his hands. “We got a text from your phone — which we haven’t found, by the way — sending out an SOS and your location.” He pulled a page out of the folder, which held a color photo of a street corner. Sanghyuk could see bushes lining the concrete, decorative cobblestones.   
  
“That’s— the northern part of downtown?” he said, half a question, and Kris nodded. “But— we were in the shitty end of the club district—”  
  
“We know, Ilhoon told us,” Kris said simply, tucking the picture away. Sanghyuk was genuinely baffled, and was glad for it. Glad he wasn’t having to act. “You were moved, presumably to keep us from happening upon the exact spot the incident occurred on. We found the two of you on the concrete, unconscious, beside this.”  
  
Kris pulled out another picture, and this one had Sanghyuk recoiling, face twisting. It was— the vampire’s heart. The picture looked to have been taken in their lab, and Sanghyuk could see far more detail than he’d have cared to.   
  
“A heart?” Sanghyuk asked. “Just the heart?”  
  
“There was this too, the heart placed over it to keep it from blowing away,” Kris said, and this time when he pulled another picture out of the folder, he handed it to Sanghyuk, who had to take it with his uninjured left hand.   
  
This picture was of a piece of paper, stained with blood dried brown. There was writing on it, Sanghyuk had to squint to read it because of the bloodstains soaked into it, making the ink run.   
  
_We don’t like it when vampires go rogue, either_.   
  
Sanghyuk couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through him, even though he knew who’d done this. He imagined it was even more chilling, to those who did not. Jaehwan did have a talent for cryptic theatricality. He wasn’t sure this was a plan he’d have approved of— but perhaps it was better, this way. It would pull the heat off Sanghyuk and Ilhoon, if nothing else. It made it look like a local vamp gang had gotten tired of this vampire attracting too much attention to itself, and intervened. Which, really, wasn’t too far off.  
  
“We ran tests— the heart belonged to a vampire. We can’t be totally sure it’s the one that was on the spree, but since there haven’t been any more attacks since then, we think it likely was,” Kris said.   
  
Sanghyuk kept staring at the picture in his hand. It was Jaehwan’s handwriting. “And this?” he asked softly.  
  
“We can’t Trace it; the blood from the heart contaminated it too much, we can’t get around it,” Kris said, “but we think it was most likely another group of vampires that intervened.”  
  
“They didn’t kill us,” Sanghyuk said, like it confused him, worried him. “They could have let us die.”  
  
“It was, perhaps, a gesture of good faith,” Junmyeon offered. “I imagine the local vamps would be worried about the extent of our retaliation, for the deaths of our colleagues. They may have saved you, called for help, as an offer to keep us from cracking down too violently. Not that we have the resources to do anything drastic, like tear up the sewers or underground but— they don’t know that.”   
  
After another few beats of examining the photo, Sanghyuk handed it back to Kris tiredly. “So we owe our lives to a group of vampires, somewhere in this city,” he said softly, shaking his head a little. “I— when can I go home? I need— I feel—”   
  
“They were just waiting for you to regain consciousness,” Ilhoon said quickly. “I don’t think you have to stay here any longer, if you don’t want to.”   
  
He and Sanghyuk looked to Kris, waiting to see if he’d object, but all he said was, “I can make the arrangements.” He looked to Junmyeon. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask him?”  
  
Junmyeon shook his head. “There’s not much else to ask, I don’t think.”  
  
“Then I’ll go speak to the nurse,” Kris said, and turned to leave, but Sanghyuk stopped him.  
  
“Kris, sir, I need to talk to you,” Sanghyuk murmured. “Alone.”  
  
Kris stared down at Sanghyuk, face unreadable, then softly told Junmyeon to go speak to the nurse in his stead. Junmyeon nodded and left. Ilhoon took a few seconds to glance over Sanghyuk, make sure he seemed alright, before he followed, closing the door behind him.  
  
Once they were alone, Kris asked, “What is it, Sanghyuk?”  
  
“I think you know,” Sanghyuk said, and Kris rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Maybe this was something Sanghyuk should wait to do, should think more on. He couldn’t in good conscience call it a spur of the moment decision, but neither had he spent time agonizing over it. It hadn’t seem to matter, with his death rapidly approaching, seemingly in the form of the vampire that had, last night, almost stopped his heart. But that immediate threat now having gone— he wanted to rest. Wanted to weigh his options, beyond hunting.   
  
There was nothing tying him here anymore. He’d lost the fire in him to hunt, it has been quelled by Hakyeon and Wonshik’s turning, Jaehwan’s love. And with Sungjae dead, and both Ilhoon and Hyunsik moving on— he had nothing left for him here.  
  
“Are you sure?” Kris was saying. “We can give you some time off— you can make a decision later—”  
  
“No,” Sanghyuk said, gentle but no less firm. “I just— I can’t, anymore. I don’t want to die like this.”  
  
Kris’s face was twisted. “We’ve lost so many hunters,” he murmured, and Sanghyuk, in a flash, remembered Yixing had been killed too. And Kris was still soldiering on. It was wearing him down though, Sanghyuk could see it.  
  
“I know,” Sanghyuk said. His head was really starting to hurt. He hoped they’d give him a prescription for some pain meds to go. “But there’ll be others. There always are.”  
  
“Yes, there are,” Kris said. “Teenagers ready to charge into the darkness. And you, Sanghyuk? You’ve been with us for three years— and before that were planning on going into the VCF. What will you do if not this?”  
  
Sanghyuk looked to the window, the clear blue sky, the searing brightness of the sun. “Live,” he said, and then he thought of Jaehwan, of roses and damp earth, of the coppery taste of blood. “Die.”


End file.
